Much walking in London

So here we are in mild, autumnal London, seeing the sights and doing a lot of walking! Today we walked in a big loop from our Premier Inn in Farringdon, through the city to St Katherine’s Dock, over Tower Bridge, and then back along the south side of the river and across the Millenium Bridge to St Paul’s. It was sunny and it was great to be back in London. We had lunch sitting outside Café Rouge at St Katherine’s Dock, which is very attractive with lots of bars, restaurants, and of course boats. We went back to the hotel to check in and have a brief rest, and then we walked (yes, more walking!) to meet Ally and Cat at Balthazars Restaurant in Russell Street for a tasty pre-theatre meal. It was lovely to see them both (even though we saw Ally the day before in Glasgow!) and Ally was telling us all about his first day in his new London office. We then all went to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see “Blithe Spirit” starting Jennifer Saunders. This was a favourite play of my Mum’s and I think that I have seen the black and white film a long time ago. I seem to remember that it was very funny and witty. 

However last night I thought that it was really quite dated and not as funny as I remembered. It wasn’t for lack of effort by the actors, who capered around enthusiastically. I wonder if the appearance of the first wife’s ghost was quite shocking and indeed risqué to audiences in the mid twentieth century, whereas nowadays we have seen many films which have a similar premise. The play was a huge success for Noel Coward in 1941 and has been revived many times since in theatres around the world to great acclaim, so maybe I’m the odd one out. Not quite the only one though, because James didn’t like it either, although Ally and cat seemed to like it.